


A Matter of Time

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV), The Rewind Files - Claire Willett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Fluff and Smut, History Jokes, Smut, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-01 19:46:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10928790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: Junior Field Agent Clarke Griffin (art specialist, Department of Renaissance History) is the rising star of the United States Time Travel Bureau.  She doesn't have time to break in the new guy - Bellamy Blake, an archivist Director Jaha recruited as a civilian asset to help the department patch a troublesome chronomaly around a missing da Vinci sketch.  He's a know-it-all, as stubborn as she is, and she wants him GONE.  Who gives a fuck if he's Octavia's brother. Or how extensive his qualifications are.(. . . Or how cute he looks in those glasses.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [museumofflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/museumofflight/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN YOU ASKED ME FOR THIS LIKE TWO YEARS AGO FOR CHRISTMAS AND I DIDN'T HAVE AN IDEA THEN BUT NOW I DO

Clarke’s first sign that this was going to be an unbearable day arrived at 8:05 a.m., when Monty walked in with coffee but no doughnuts. 

Raven pounced first.  “What the hell, man!” she snapped.  “It’s sugar o’clock.  You had one job.”

“If you want a donut, go to the mess,” Monty said, handing her what would be the first of her three to five daily double espressos.  “Director Jaha will be here at 8:30 and you don’t want powdered sugar on your face.”

“I don’t dress up for Jaha.”

"He didn't say gowns and tiaras, Raven," Clarke sighed as Monty passed her a latte.  "He said bare minimum of professional cleanliness.  Which you’ve never been able to manage with baked goods.”

“I need a fucking donut, Griffin, I’m starving.”

“You should eat breakfast before work.  Like a human.”

“You sound like your mother.”

“Thank you!” called Abby from her office, causing the others to marvel again at her nearly-supernatural ability to detect, from anywhere in the building, the instant she was being sassed.

“Raven, just go get a donut after Jaha leaves,” said Clarke wearily, carrying the second latte on the tray in to her mother’s office.  “You'll live."

“Wait, what?”  Octavia exclaimed, stepping out of Kane’s doorway to take her boss' tea and her own black coffee off Monty’s tray.  “We have to deal with _Jaha_ today?  Kane, what the fuck!”

Kane’s sigh could be heard from space.  “Conference room,” he said loudly, rising from his desk and bringing his tea with him.  “Everybody.  _Now.”_

* * *

The operatives of the United States Time Travel Bureau were formally known as government-authorized time-slip field agents (colloquially known as “The Repairmen” on most floors of the building save this one, where the Griffins had banned the term because it was sexist).  Inside the Washington D.C. building which had once been the National Archives, hundreds of expert historians, system technicians, agents trained in person-to-person investigative field work, and a host of other peculiar specialties (a wardrobe department, a culinary research academy, a historical weapons locker, a veritable museum of period telecommunications devices) worked in tandem to detect, research and correct errors in the General Timeline, known as “chronomalies.”

Active chronomalies were assigned to teams of agents by geography, which meant the U.S. Bureau’s Department of Renaissance History saw very little action.  They were tiny, and woefully understaffed, with at present only two senior agents, each staffed by a junior agent and a tech. 

(They had had three senior agents, once.  But that had been years ago, and no one – particularly not the Griffins – ever spoke of it.)

Senior Field Agent Marcus Kane, a political historian, was nominally the department head, though he’d come up through the Academy with Abby and they’d been hired at the same time.  They’d come to an arrangement years ago to swap the title back and forth periodically to relieve the other of the increased burden of tedious administrative duties which accompanied the title of “chair.”  Octavia Blake was Kane’s junior agent (only Kane, of all the agents, went by his last name; Abby called him Marcus).  She’d come close to being rejected as a new recruit, deemed hopelessly ungovernable by the Academy faculty, with a list of behavioral citations a mile long in her personnel file.  Kane had almost said no, too.  But he’d passed by the trainee gymnasium one morning on his way back from a meeting and caught sight of her sparring with a partner, switching effortlessly through a dizzying array of historical weapons at a moment’s notice as the instructor called them out.  “Quarterstaff!” “Katana!” “Bayonet!” The girl was brutal but graceful, taking blow after blow but refusing to yield.  She’d be bored out of her mind in his department, he thought, but still, he saw something in her nobody else had seen yet: potential.  At the moment, she was a human resources liability the Academy was only too pleased to be rid of; but over the past four years Kane had transformed her from a pugilistic hothead who’d really only been interested in getting to swing a sword around into a seasoned expert on military tactics, weaponry and warfare.  The two enjoyed a colorful, occasionally noisy but deeply affectionate relationship, tempered greatly by the helpful steadying presence of Monty Green, their tech, to whose lot it usually fell to wearily rise from his chair and close Kane’s office door when the shouting got too loud.

On the other side of the empty office beside Kane’s sat Clarke’s mother Abby.  She came from a very long and very proud line of doctors, most of whom had never ceased politely berating her for being the first Walters to eschew the family profession to pursue a career in public service.  (“The Time Travel Bureau?” Grandmother had repeated in disbelief, voice crisp with elegant disdain.  “But darling, isn’t that the _government_?”)  But the apple never fell far from the tree; she was a specialist in the history of science and medicine, the best in the business, and hardly a week went by without someone from the French or South African or Taiwanese bureaus calling her with a research question.  Clarke – both Abby’s only child and her junior agent – was a nationally-respected Renaissance art scholar and already one of the industry’s rising stars, with more commendations for exemplary field work than anyone in the department besides her mother.  

Abby only hired women as techs (she was the kind of woman who was born, as Kane observed once to Clarke, to be a mother to daughters), and for years she’d cycled through a new one every year or so, hiring a green recruit, training them up with her ruthless but loving standards, then sending them off to go work for an agent who could keep them a lot busier.  But her current tech had no intention of going anywhere.  Her name was Raven Reyes and she was perhaps the single most effortlessly-skilled systems analyst in the entire Bureau.  Raven was forever being courted by other, far flashier and better-funded departments whose equipment wasn’t quite so goddamn always breaking down, many of whom even had their own transport labs (Renaissance had to share with three other floors, which meant they generally had last priority when scheduling field jumps and often had no more than ten or fifteen minutes before the next agents came in).  But Raven had been placed with Abby right out of the Academy and no force on earth – no pay raise, no sleek shiny new transport console, not even an in-office coffee station – could separate them.  Her fanatical loyalty only increased when Clarke turned up a few years after. 

(It was an open secret within the department that Raven and Clarke slept together periodically, though the team generally refrained from mentioning it while “the grownups” were present; not merely because Clarke was reluctant to have her personal life dissected in front of her mother, but because the policy on office relationships between agents and techs – while not _strictly_ enforced – was expressed in the employee handbook with stern enough wording that Kane and Abby felt it in everyone’s best interests for them to maintain plausible deniability.)

The early days of chrono-travel had been like the Wild West, with every country out for themselves and no rules or restrictions on who could go where.  But after the dozenth “hey, what if we just killed Hitler” sent the entire twentieth century into a cascading tailspin of timeline aftershocks, the U.N. General Assembly finally decided enough was enough, and for the past eighty or ninety years the boundaries of each Bureau’s jurisdiction were, with rare exceptions, mostly geographic.  This meant the _real_ Renaissance action was in Rome, at the Ministero del Tempo; by far the largest European bureau, it covered not only the entire history of Italy, but frequently ran point on joint international task forces in all eras and locales of the Roman Empire, and even collaborated with the Vatican.  Kane was, at present, attempting to train Octavia to qualify for a transfer to the Ministero, where there was a far greater chance she’d get to use her assassin-level combat training (useless in her current desk job).  Instead of walking the streets of Tuscany with a sword on her belt, Octavia and the rest of the department were researchers, specializing primarily artifacts.  If they saw any field work – which was rarely – it was generally popping in and out of the 19th and 20th century to visit museums, libraries or universities and repairing chronomalies centered around pieces of European history that found their way to the New World. 

Chronomalies around works of art tend to be very small, and don't ripple outward much past the art world itself.  In Abby’s early days, there had once been a glitch around the Pietá that made things exciting for a few months, but that turned out to be a side effect of a much larger timeline glitch centered on the Vatican in which the statue had been mere collateral damage.  The Ministero had swept in and bumped the Americans off the case once the chronomaly had been identified.  That was nearly fifteen years ago and remained the most high-profile case they’d ever had. 

It was unglamorous but steady work, low on danger and high on dicking around after about three p.m. on Fridays because there was often so little to do.  The minimum level of combat training for this job was only a 2 (basic self-defense, firearms only in emergencies and rarely worth the accompanying paperwork); Octavia, a level 10, rarely got any closer to a swordfight than authenticating a painting of one.  Hardly what she’d signed up for.

To illustrate just how low on the Bureau hierarchy the Renaissance department ranked, their offices were located in the basement (“both literally and metaphorically,” as Raven was fond of pointing out); though, really, it wasn’t bad.  Recessed lightboxes weren’t as good as windows, but they were better than nothing, and it was definitely convenient being close enough to the mess hall to beat the lunch line every day.  And, most crucially, the higher-ups left them alone.  The aforementioned Thelonious Jaha, who had come from the Renaissance department before being promoted to his administrative post, supervised all the pre-colonization departments of the Bureau; everything from Ancient Rome to Viking explorers fell under his jurisdiction, which Jaha tended to frame as far more impressive than it actually was.  Kane and Abby met with Jaha every Wednesday, but they did it in his office; he hadn’t deigned to visit the department in longer than any of them could immediately remember.  If he was coming in person, it was unlikely to be a mere casual visit.

* * *

 

Kane’s face, as they all filed in and took their seats, did not instill much confidence.   He sat at the head of the oblong glass table, Abby at his side, and the air of calm he projected as he patiently sipped his tea did not fool them.  Especially not in contrast to Abby’s tightly-clenched jaw and the irritation flashing in her dark eyes.  Like Kane, she had come up through the Academy with Jaha, and knew him well, if anyone did.  There might have been something like friendship between them once, but for the deserted office next door to hers and the ghost of the man who had once inhabited it.  Something between them had broken, after that, and never been repaired. 

“Yes,” he began without preamble.  “Director Jaha is on his way, and yes, you are all expected to behave yourselves.”

“Why is he –“

“Octavia, I swear to God, I am literally in the middle of explaining it.”

_“Fine.”_

“I spoke with Charles this morning,” Kane went on.  (As his old friend, Kane was one of the few people who referred to Director Pike of the Classical Antiquities & Ancient History department by his first name.)  “Classics is loaning us a deep-cover civilian asset.  He starts today.”

“Why do we need – “

_“Octavia.”_

_“Fine.”_

“We’re getting a field mission,” Abby announced, causing everyone in the room to sit up a little straighter, staring at her in astonishment.  Their last field mission had been months ago, and Clarke had been in and out in less than four hours.  They were dying for something interesting to do.  “Pike’s asset isn’t affiliated with the Bureau; he’s in academia, but he has resources that Jaha says we’ll find useful.”

“Why do we need a civilian?” asked Clarke, brow furrowed, already suspicious.  She liked field work, but she liked doing it her own way.  They’d worked with a civilian asset once – a French art restorer – and the woman had been underfoot the whole time.  The new guy hadn’t even shown up yet, but Clarke was already prepared to heartily dislike him.

“Jaha didn’t say.”

“Why isn’t Pike’s department taking the case?” asked Monty.

“Outside his jurisdiction.  No one in his department is cleared for post-Roman Empire field work without recertification, and they’re swamped with the Aeschylus thing.”

“The Aeschylus thing” was a pretty typical example of a day in the decidedly un-glamorous life of a time travel historian.  The Historical Realignment Division’s job was to repair glitches in the General Timeline caused by continual aftershocks from the chaos sown by unregulated First-Gen agents.  The major crises were repaired decades ago, but bugs were always cropping up.  Elsewhere in the building, field agents strapped on period-authentic military uniforms and hoisted bayonets to go undercover in the Revolutionary War and, say, repair a chronomaly where a stray bullet accidentally takes out Alexander Hamilton several decades too early, or donned leather boots and expertly-weathered holsters to reroute a pack of California gunslingers who are supposed to end up in Nevada but unexpectedly change course for Mexico instead.  Meanwhile, two floors up, in Charles Pike’s department, his entire fleet of agents had spent the past three months poring over theatre playbills, library inventory records and college course catalogs to track down every mention of _The Ransom of Hector_ , a supposedly-lost play by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus that was now suddenly popping up all over the timeline, seemingly replacing _Seven Against Thebes_ which had abruptly disappeared from the historical record.  Pike’s department was charged with, first, determining if _The Ransom of Hector_ was a forgery, and if so, when and where it had first appeared; and second, if the play was authentic, to file a report with the Greek Time Travel Bureau whose agents would trace the chronomaly back to its source and destroy the play as history intended.  A great deal of Pike’s job involved destroying suddenly-resurgent artifacts, so it didn’t pay in his line of work to be particularly sentimental.  But he was smart, and if he’d hand-picked this civilian asset for his own department, then the guy was probably good.

“Jaha is going to introduce you to the new asset,” Kane went on.  “He’s used to working long-distance with Pike, so this is his first trip to the Bureau.  Please don’t scare him.  He’ll sit in while Jaha briefs.” 

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s he from?”

“He’s American, but he’s been working in Britain for the past few years.  He’s here on short-term leave.  Deep cover.  They think he’s visiting family, apparently he has a sister in the area.  He’s an archivist, that’s all I know.”

A faint, muffled _ding!_ from the elevator bay down the hall alerted them that their visitors were early.  Kane and Abby surveyed the room, arms folded, that mutual look of parental warning they’d perfected over the years having the desired effect on three of the four young people in the room. “We’re not kidding,” said Abby firmly.  “Best behavior.  All of you.”

Monty, Clarke and Raven nodded.  But Octavia, oblivious to their words, had shot to her feet and stood staring, openmouthed at the two men walking through the doorway.  “You’ve gotta be _fucking_ kidding me,” she blurted out, causing Director Jaha’s eyebrows to raise superciliously. _“Bellamy?”_

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

It took about fifteen minutes before the eruption of familial chaos in the conference room settled down enough for everyone else in the room to figure out what in God’s name was going on.

“What the hell are you doing here, O?”

“What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

“Ohhhhh, no.  Do _not_ turn this around on me."  Bellamy Blake's angular, freckled face was tight and cold with utter fury.  "I wanted to tell you I was coming to town, but the Bureau told me the mission was classified.  But I’d sure like to hear _your_ excuse for why you told me you worked behind the front desk in the Bureau’s payroll department when this whole time you were _a goddamned field agent_.”

To avoid her brother's gaze, Octavia's eyes were at the moment directed towards her boss, so she got to watch in real time as Kane's face abruptly transformed into the same shocked, disapproving expression as Bellamy's, and suddenly there was no safe place in the room to look except down at the floor.  Everyone was staring at her.  Jaha was impatient, Abby shocked, Monty acutely uncomfortable.  Even Raven – who you could usually count on to be reliably unsentimental about family shit – was intrigued enough at the unfolding drama that, even when handed a golden opportunity to slip out undetected amidst the chaos and finally get her donut, she didn’t even budge, staring from Blake to Blake with an expression of enormous interest.

It was left to Clarke, finally, to step in and attempt to make some sense of the thing.

“Kane, why don’t you and Mom take Jaha down to the mess for a cup of coffee,” she said firmly.  Kane raised his eyebrow, directing his patented _"please tell me you know what you're doing"_ face in her direction.  “Buy me ten minutes,” she said under her breath.  “Please.” 

After a moment he nodded, rising from his chair and gesturing to Abby.  “We won’t get anywhere until these two take a moment to . . . sort through this,” he said, looking from one fuming sibling to the other, his entire body one giant sigh.  He had long since reached a place of fond, weary resignation where very little about Octavia surprised him, but even he was not quite sure what to do about an abrupt 100% increase in Blakes to manage.  Though at least they now had a credible explanation for why, in four years, no one in the office had ever met her mystery brother before (leaving Monty privately half-convinced he didn't exist and that visiting him in London had all along been a cover for something else).  But this was a two-man job now, and Clarke and Kane had always made a good team whenever level heads were needed.  It would take all his persuasiveness, and Abby's to boot, to restore Jaha into a personable enough mood to get through the briefing, since he hated nothing more in all the world than his employees' personal lives interfering with workplace productivity; and he was useless in the conference room, since the last thing likely to get through to Octavia right now was a dad lecture.  So he raised his other eyebrow (switching over to his patented _"for the love of God, fix this"_ look) before gently steering Abby and Jaha out the door and closing it behind him.

With the adults gone (well, Jaha really), the tension dissipated everywhere except for the cloud of stubborn, unflinching sibling rage crackling between Bellamy and Octavia like an electrical charge.  Clarke decided to start with the older one.  “Sit,” she ordered the civilian asset brusquely, motioning everyone else back into their chairs.  She was being efficient, not rude, but her peremptory tone pinged some internal trigger in Bellamy Blake, earning his sister a momentary reprieve as he whirled around to direct his glare at the blonde girl across the table.

“ _Excuse_ me?” he said, incredulously.  “Who left you in charge?”

“Kane did,” Raven offered helpfully, leaning back in her chair and propping her boots up on the conference table (something she only got to do when the adults were gone) to sip her coffee and watch the drama unfold with great interest.  They both ignored her.

“We have a meeting to get through,” Clarke said impatiently.  “If the Director comes to brief us on a mission in person, it's a big deal. Either sit down and we can talk this out here, or go out in the hall and scream this out with your sister and then come back when you're done.  But get it out of your system.  We have work to do."

“Yeah,” he retorted.  “So do I.  That’s why I’m here.”

"Yeah, why _are_ you here?" Octavia started to ask, but Clarke shut her up with a gesture.

"Okay," said Clarke firmly, taking control of the room again.  "Octavia, you talk to your brother at least once a week and you've been out to visit him in London half a dozen times.  That's a whole lot of lying.  Why the hell wouldn't you tell your brother where you really worked?

“Well, that depends,” Octavia fired back stubbornly.  “If he was _your_ brother, and he told you that field training was too dangerous for you and that he didn’t believe you had what it took to make it as an active agent –"

“O, I _never_ said that.”

“You might as well have.”

“I read the risk assessment waiver you brought home after your combat training finals.  The Academy called you a liability in the field.  They basically came right out and said that the chances of something happening to you, or happening to another agent because you were reckless –"

 _“This,”_ Octavia snapped, turning away from him and back to Clarke, jaw clenched tight with fury.  “This is why I can’t fucking tell him anything.  _This_ is why he didn’t know.  It would have been this same damned lecture for the past four years.”

"You don't actually have any evidence of that," Monty interjected gently from across the table, his mild, reasonable voice startling them all (Octavia, plainly, had forgotten he was there).  "If you’d told him the truth right away, he would have had four years to get used to the idea by now.  Which means we probably wouldn’t be having this argument right now and wasting the Director’s time.”

“Monty’s right,” Clarke agreed.  “Octavia, lying to your brother didn’t help anything.  It just made all this worse.  You should have told him the truth years ago.” 

Octavia could feel herself losing the high ground, and clenched her jaw tighter, glowering at the floor.  Bellamy, feeling the winds shift in his direction, straightened up a little, folding his arms and glowering at her, momentarily bolstered by feeling that the rest of the room was now on his side, convincing him even more strongly of his own rightness and sharpening his anger at his sister even more.  Clarke spotted this immediately and moved to shut it down.  "Not so fast," she told him, voice no less sharp and commanding than it had been with his sister.  “You’re not in the clear here either.”

“There’s no way this is gonna be over in ten minutes,” Monty muttered wearily to Raven.

She swatted him dismissively on the shoulder.  “Who cares.  Clarke’s hot when she’s pissed.  I could watch this all damn day.”

“I thought we had a rule about not talking about that in the office.”

“No, we have a rule about not talking about that in front of Mom and Dad.”

“Can we expand it to Mom and Dad and Monty?”

“You’re no fun.”

 _“Anyway,”_ Clarke said sharply, silencing the peanut gallery and returning her attention to Bellamy.  “Agent Blake –"

“I’m not an agent,” he interrupted her.  “It's actually –"

“Bellamy.  Fine.  Anyway –"

“No,” he cut her off again, voice frosty.  “I was going to say, it’s _Doctor_ Blake.”

Silence.

Clarke's pale skin flushed pink with some combination of embarrassment, annoyance, and stubborn impatience as Raven’s approving gaze flicked from Clarke to Bellamy, regarding him with new interest.  “This one’s feisty,” she murmured under her breath to Monty.  “Let’s keep him.”

“' _Doctor'_ Blake,” Clarke went on, the first word dripping with barely-suppressed disdain, the sarcastic quotation marks around it perfectly audible to Bellamy.  “As I was saying.  You don’t have to like it, but your sister _is_ a field agent.  And she’s a good one.  It’s fair to be upset that she lied, but in this building she outranks you.  We don’t care how good you are or why Agent Pike referred you to us; if you can’t trust your sister, we can’t trust you.  It’s your call.”

“I never said I didn’t trust her -"

“You never _had_ to say it,” Octavia snapped.

“Think of it this way,” said Clarke, switching tactics and attempting to force her voice to convey a patience she definitively wasn't feeling.  “You’re here to assist on a field mission.  That mission belongs to our department with you, or without you.  But if you’re really worried about your sister, then stick around and work _with_ us.  Trust your sister."  Bellamy snorted at this derisively, and Clarke sighed.  "Fine, then," she said.  "If you can't trust her, trust me."

Bellamy regarded Clarke with a furrowed brow, like this was a new idea, for a long thoughtful moment before Monty broke the silence.

“It’s not like the rest of us don’t know Octavia's a pain in the ass sometimes," he began.

“Thanks a lot, Monty."

“But, I was going to say,” he went on, cutting her off, “that she actually is really good at this.  You might be surprised.”

Bellamy looked at his sister for a long, long time, meeting her defiant gaze.  Clarke watched him.  Finally, his tightly-clenched jaw began to soften, and something that might have been the ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“What the hell,” he said finally, giving in.  “At least now I can see what you _actually_ do for a living.”

Octavia softened a little bit at this too, and might almost have smiled back, though whatever she was about to say next died away at the sound of three pairs of footsteps outside, immediately followed by the sight of Kane, Jaha and Abby returning from the mess.  Clarke was struck with an uneasy feeling at the expression on her mother's face, etched with a worry far too deep to merely be concern about whatever fracas was going on without them in the conference room.  Something had happened.  Jaha's face was still tight with displeasure.  Kane's brow was furrowed in a mirror of Abby's, though he exhaled with deep relief at the apparent truce between the warring siblings as he pushed the glass door open and ushered the others in.

“Oh good,” Abby remarked dryly, looking from Blake to Blake and back again.  “No broken bones or furniture this time.  Marcus, your little girl is growing up.”

“It was _one chair_ , Abby, how many times are you going to throw that back in my face?” 

“Oh, a few more times at least,” she said cheerfully, resuming her seat.  “Now, is everyone ready to do a job?”  She looked around the room, waiting for everyone to nod in agreement.  “Good, then.  Thelonious,” she said, turning to the Director, “you have the floor.  Tell them what you just told us.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Leonardo da Vinci,” Jaha said crisply as he tapped at his handheld and a projection appeared in the air over the conference table, synced to each chair so all of them had a perfect clear view.  “No title, catalogued merely as _‘A nude man from the front.’_   Dated sometime between 1504 and 1506, according to our best estimates, along with this one –"  He tapped again, and a second drawing appeared next to the first.

“Let me guess," Raven piped up.  "This one's called _’A nude man from the back_.’”

 _“Raven,”_ Abby said sternly.

“What?” she protested.  “I wasn’t sassing! That was my real guess!”

“'From the _rear_ ,'” Jaha corrected her coldly, causing every single person in the room to suddenly find themselves very occupied with looking down at the table or the floor.  Kane came the closest to breaking, after taking a sip of tea for camouflage and accidentally making eye contact with Octavia, who was biting her lip and gritting her teeth to keep a straight face.  Clarke rescued them before it got any worse by leaning forward to get a closer look at the projections, studying both drawings carefully and catching the director’s attention. 

“Familiar?” asked the director, his tone indicating that this question had a right and a wrong answer. Clarke tilted her head, considering. 

“The style, yes," she finally said.  "Not this man in particular.”  She turned to Jaha.  “Same man, I’m assuming?  The build and musculature seem to match.”

He nodded.  “Go ahead, Agent Griffin.  Tell me what you see.”

Clarke rose from her seat, leaning in with her hands planted on the table to examine both drawings more closely.  (It did not escape the notice of Raven, sitting across the table, that this move vastly improved her view of Clarke’s excellent cleavage; nor did it escape her that this _also_ did not escape Bellamy Blake.)

“Black and red chalk,” Clarke said, brow furrowed in deep concentration.  “With touches of pen and ink.  He used that sometimes for emphasis when he was working with this reddish kind of paper.  I don’t recognize the model’s face –"

“For real?” Raven muttered under her breath.  “You’re looking at his _face_?”

“Why not?  He’s not that impressive anywhere lower down,” Octavia whispered back, making Raven snicker and earning them both a repressive Mom Glare from Abby.

 _“Anyway,”_ Clarke sailed on, shooting a not-dissimilar Clarke Glare at her friends before continuing.  “The important thing to note here, in terms of the style, is that he's not glorifying the male form.  This isn’t Apollo, or the Archangel Gabriel, it's not the style he uses when depicting figures from literature or mythology.  Nothing's heightened.  It's an ordinary man.”

“Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings crop up often in science textbooks,” her mother added.  “Stylistically, I’d class this more with something like _Vetruvian Man_.  He’s actually worked very carefully here to depict the surface musculature of a standing figure accurately.  The balance of tensed muscles to relaxed muscles is right on, and that's tricky.  The trapezius and the scapula are particularly well-done.  Nice gluteus maximus, too," she added under her breath to Raven, who coughed to conceal a cackle.  "Drawn from life, wouldn’t you say?” she asked, turning to Clarke, and her daughter nodded.

“Definitely.  The model was probably someone of the lower or working classes; he hasn’t smoothed out imperfections or stylized the form to flatter someone.  He just drew what he saw.”

“Still,” said Raven, eyes flickering appraisingly up and down the nude figure – a tall, powerfully-built man with a thatch of curly dark hair – “you wouldn’t kick him out of bed.”

“It’s cute that you think Abby won’t fire you, Raven,” said Kane.

“It’s cute that she keep threatening to and then not doing it.”

“Thank you, Agent Griffin,” Jaha said to Clarke, once again loftily ignoring Raven’s quips.  “Your observational skills are, as ever, above reproach.  And I’m not surprised that you don’t recognize this particular drawing; though there should be at least one person in this room who does.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bellamy Blake said suddenly, startling them all.  “ _That’s_ why you brought me here?”

What?” Clarke demanded, torn between curiosity at what had suddenly arrested his attention so forcefully, and annoyance that he'd clearly caught something she missed.

“Drawn sometime between 1504 and 1506, a male study, working- or lower-class, powerful musculature but not stylized," Bellamy said, thinking out loud.  "Like, for instance, a soldier.”  Jaha nodded, approvingly, as Bellamy’s eyes widened.  “This isn’t just an anatomical exercise,” he told the room full of blankly staring faces.  “It’s a study for a much, much larger work.”  He stood up from his seat across from Clarke and leaned in to regard the drawing with something like awe.  Clarke watched his face through the transparent veneer of the projection as his eyes lit up with a reverence that was almost spiritual.

“Very good, Mr. Blake,” said Jaha approvingly.  “Tell them which work it is.”

“It’s a piece of _The Battle of Anghiari,_ ” Bellamy whispered, breathless with an incandescent nerd glee that rivaled Clarke's.  “The greatest painting no one has ever seen.  We're looking at a study from the lost Leonardo."

* * *

“That sounds like the title of a really awful book,” said Monty, wrinkling his nose.  “Like from the late 20th century when there was that brief craze for thrillers where everyone raced around the Vatican finding clues in old statues.”

“It . . . has elements of that,” Bellamy allowed.  “But it’s cooler.”

“We already have one art history dork who thinks da Vinci is _cool,”_ Monty said, gesturing rather condescendingly in Clarke’s direction.  “I’m not sure there’s room for another one.”

“I think da Vinci is cool,” Abby told him.

“Yeah, but for _science_ reasons,” Octavia explained, “so he approves of you.”

“Exactly.”

“We seem to have lost the plot somewhat,” Jaha interrupted, his expression making it clear that he was now suddenly remembering why he hated briefing the Renaissance Department on field missions himself.  “Mr. Blake, please tell us about the painting.”

Clarke stiffened immediately.  “Excuse me, sir,” she said to Jaha, “but art history is _my_ specialty.”

“Yes, it is,” said Jaha evenly.  “But the lost Leonardo is Mr. Blake’s specialty.  For the duration of this mission, he will be your partner.”

All the air went out of the room. 

“I’m sorry,” Clarke said carefully, after a long, frosty silence.  “I’m going to need you to say that again.”

“Mr. Blake is your partner on this field mission.”

“I don’t work with a partner.”

“You do now.”

“Sir, with all due respect –"

“This is not up for debate, Agent Griffin.  Sit down and take notes.  You will need this information later.”  He nodded at Bellamy, as Clarke gritted her teeth and took her seat again with a grudging air.  “Marcus will take you through an overview of the battle itself later, but I’d like to hear Mr. Blake tell us what he knows about the history of the painting.”

“It was commissioned by Niccolo Machiavelli,” said Bellamy, and as he spoke all his tension fell away.  Even Clarke couldn't deny that he knew what he was talking about, and explained it effortlessly.  “He wanted to decorate the Palazze Vecchio with artwork depicting Florence’s achievements in battle over the centuries.  The Hall of Five Hundred had two big walls, with da Vinci assigned to paint a fresco of the battle of Anghiari on one, and Michelangelo on the other, depicting the battle of Cascina.  It was the only project they ever worked on together, but neither of the works survived.  This was meant to be Leonardo’s largest and most impressive work; he invented a whole new kind of scaffolding that could raise and lower by folding up like an accordion.  But he’d had a rocky history before with fresco paints in the past, so he decided to stick with what he knew, and use oil paint on the wall.  Which was a remarkably dumb mistake for such a brilliant man; no one quite knows why he did that.  Because the undercoat was so thick - wax in it, they think - the paint started to drip as it dried out.  He ended up hanging charcoal braziers against the wall to speed up the drying process, desperate to try and preserve whatever he could, but only a few chunks of the lower half survived.  The upper portions were a mess.  After that, he just gave up.  Michelangelo just straight-up abandoned his wall; he didn’t even finish.  The partial paintings sat there for about a decade before an artist named Giorgio Vasari was hired to enlarge and reconstruct that wing of the palace, and painted a bunch of new frescoes in their place.  Everyone assumed Vasari just painted over the wrecked da Vinci.  But Vasari was a huge da Vinci fan, and it’s hard to imagine he could have cheerfully destroyed his hero's work.”

“So what, then?” asked Raven, curious in spite of herself.  “Did he build a fake wall and paint on that?”

“He might have,” Bellamy allowed.  “There were rumors of design schematics revealing that those two walls were a few inches wider than others, which would bear out the hypothesis that he built a second wall in front, with a gap of air in between, to preserve the original works.  And there’s a soldier, in the painting Vasari did on the wall where da Vinci’s used to be, who’s waving a green flag with the words ‘ _Cerca trova_.’”

“ _’He who seeks, finds_ ,’” Kane finished for him.  Bellamy nodded.

“Tell me this,” Jaha said.  “In your expert opinion, is it possible that a fragment of the lower half of the fresco could have made it out of the palazzo intact, without anyone knowing?”

“During Vasani’s remodel, you mean?  It wouldn’t have been easy, but it’s _possible_.  They could have chipped off the plaster in sheets big enough to remove and reconstruct the fresco.  It isn’t a load-bearing wall, see, that's the important thing not everyone knows; whole chunks of it could have been removed and a false panel built to mask it without anyone spotting it.”

Jaha nodded, pleased.  “Very good, Mr. Blake,” he said approvingly.  “You will be a tremendous asset to the team.  Agent Griffin, I’d like you to clear your schedule for the rest of the afternoon so Mr. Blake can continue to brief you on the painting’s history.”

“Sir, I have spent my whole career in this area, I’ve done six A-level field drops into High Renaissance, I’ve _met_ da Vinci, I don’t need a civilian to take me to school on this.”

“Well, obviously you do,” said Bellamy, indignant and a little wounded, “or you’d have recognized those drawings when you saw them.  Like I did.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a set of five male studies – these two, and three other similar ones – all chalk on red paper.  Early rough drafts.  All that’s left of the lost painting.  I haven’t seen these two, but I’ve seen the others.  Da Vinci bequeathed them to one of his most beloved students, whose name was Francesco Melzi; he inherited and compiled a ton of da Vinci’s sketches and notes.  Melzi and his sons were the preservers of da Vinci’s legacy.  Stacks and stacks of sketches and studies like this were in their family’s possession for centuries until they fell on hard times and started selling it off in the 1600’s.  That’s how they landed in the possession of King Charles II, and they’ve been in the Royal Library ever since.”  He looked at Jaha.  “That’s why you picked me,” he said, but it wasn’t a question.  “Because you needed an archivist who works with the only existing traces of this work.  You’ve got a fake _Battle of Anghiari_ in some timeline somewhere, and there’s nobody alive who can authenticate it, because nobody has ever seen what it looks like.”

“Hey,” said Octavia, looking up at her brother with new interest.  “You’re not bad at this.”

“Indeed he’s not,” said Jaha, with something like approval.  “Mr. Blake is exactly right.  We’ve detected a chronomaly in 18th-century England, with reports of a surviving section of the original fresco on display in a private home.  But we’re unable to trace the work’s provenance to determine whether it is a contemporary forgery, a period forgery, or a genuine timeline error that requires correction.”

“Why isn’t the London bureau handling it?” asked Abby.  “If the chronomaly is in England.”

“It’s complicated,” he explained.  “Legally, the home on which the work is on display belongs to a British citizen, and is therefore British property.  But his wife is American, and the house was purchased with her money, and what little paperwork they were able to obtain lists the fresco as her possession.”

"So it would be American property if women back then could own shit," said Octavia.

“But, since it's gray area, they flipped for it,” guessed Raven.  “And we lost.”

“Or we won,” corrected Clarke.  “We get a new field mission.”

“Given the choice between doing work and not doing work, I will always choose not doing work.”

“You realize we’re all still here, don’t you, Raven?” said Kane, sighing wearily.  “I mean, you can see us here, sitting in front of you, while these words come out of your mouth.”

"No, I thought this was the scene where all the other characters leave the stage and I address the audience," Raven shot back.  "Am I in the wrong play?"  Kane started to respond, but intervention became unnecessary when Abby, fed up, kicked Raven under the table.  "Ow!" Raven complained.  "Dammit, that was my good leg!"

"Not for long," muttered Abby darkly.

“So that’s the mission,” Bellamy said to Jaha, ignoring them, still utterly absorbed in the world of the painting.  “You’re sending us back to 18th-century England to authenticate a piece of the lost Leonardo.”

“Exactly.”

“What do we do if it’s fake?”

“If it’s fake, you leave it alone,” the director answered.  “Forgeries rarely disrupt the timeline, they pop up everywhere.  And fortunately, they aren't our responsibility.  We don't stop crimes unless they're historical inaccuracies, Mr. Blake.  If this woman or her family were swindled out of a fortune for a counterfeit da Vinci fresco, the Time Travel Bureau is not obligated to intervene.”

“But what if it’s real?”

“If it’s real,” Jaha said grimly, “then there’s a rift in da Vinci’s timeline, and the longer it goes unchecked, the more it will spread.  The painting is supposed to be destroyed.  If the fresco is real, then we have a problem.”

“What do you do then?”

“If the fresco is real,” his sister explained, “if some piece of it did survive, then we have to go back to 1506 ourselves and destroy it.”

“ _Destroy_ it?”  Bellamy stared at her in horror.  “Octavia, the lost fresco of Leonardo da Vinci is one of the single greatest tragedies in all of Western art history.  It deserves to be saved, if there's any way to save it.  We have to do something."

“No, we don’t,” Clarke said bluntly.  “We can’t afford to be sentimental about this, Bellamy.  This is our job.  If the General Timeline says the painting doesn’t survive, then it doesn’t survive.  That’s how this works.”

“Seriously?”  He glared at her, irritated, almost disgusted.  “So you don’t care that one of the greatest works by one of our greatest artists will be destroyed before anyone gets to see it.  What’s next?  Tomorrow do you go back and light the match in the Library of Alexandria?”

“Listen, I know you’re new here,” she fired back, “but I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, so don't talk to me like you understand what we do when you _clearly_ don't.  Letting a chronomaly that size spread unchecked could cause unimaginable chaos.”

“Clarke, if we could save that painting –"

“But we can’t.  I don’t like it either, but that’s the way it goes.  We don't have a choice.”

“Mr. Blake, Agent Griffin,” said Jaha repressively.  “That’s enough.  You all have your assignments, and a great deal of work to do.  Mr. Blake will be given a desk in this office for the next five days until the field mission.  Agent Reyes, you will be his field handler.”

“Sir, I’ve never had to prep a civilian for a field drop before," Raven protested, but Jaha was unmoved.

“Then you'd better work fast," he said tautly.  "Since you have five days to learn.”

“Can’t he work out of Pike’s department?” Clarke demanded, not caring how rude she sounded.  “We don’t have an extra desk down here.”

“Yes, you do,” said Jaha firmly, and suddenly a perplexed Bellamy watched as all the other eyes in the room turned toward the Griffin women, whose faces suddenly wore identical masks of tension, fury and grief at once.

“Thelonious, don’t,” said Abby quietly, something desperate and strange pulsing in her voice.  “Please don’t do this.” 

But Jaha ignored her, rising from his seat and making his way out the door.  “You have an empty desk, and a civilian asset who needs office space in proximity to the team,” he reminded them curtly.  “Abby, I am not having this debate with you again.  Mr. Blake works for you now.  Put him to work.  All of you have jobs to do.”  And with that, he swept out of the room, leaving awkward silence behind him. 

* * *

 

Monty, always the first to escape an awkward situation, evaporated almost immediately to return to his desk, followed by Raven, who now had a new agent to prep for field work.  Kane recovered next; he himself was clearly feeling something more than he was showing, but he repressed it a bit better than the stormy Griffins, and Bellamy watched him sweep both mother and daughter out into the hallway for what looked, from a distance, like a forceful and heated debate.  They were both plainly livid, though clearly not at each other – or, it seemed, at Kane.  He, for his part, appeared to be listening with empathetic patience to something he’d heard many times before, one gentle, reassuring hand resting on each of their shoulders. 

Through the glass wall of the conference room, Bellamy watched the three of them for a long time, wondering what in God's name he’d stumbled into.

“It was her dad’s office,” Octavia finally said, breaking into his silence to answer his unspoken question.  “That’s why Clarke and Abby are so upset.  The empty office used to be Jake Griffin’s.  He died on a field mission that went wrong, years ago.  No one’s sat at that desk ever since.”

“Jesus,” Bellamy muttered, appalled.  “And her boss just gave it to the new guy.”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder she’s pissed.”

“Oh, I think she was pissed before,” Octavia remarked dryly.  “Clarke’s not used to anyone who doesn’t treat her like she’s the smartest kid in school.  I mean, to be fair, she usually _is_ the smartest kid in school, but still.  Things could get interesting with you around here.”

“If she doesn’t murder me.”

“I don’t think she wants to murder you,” his sister observed, “I think she wants to jump you.”

“Jesus, Octavia!”

“But she’s got this whole complicated on/off thing with Raven, so honestly, like, I wouldn’t get involved.”

"I wasn't - why are you - I didn't need to know that.  She's not - she wasn't -"  He trailed off, flushing at her amused glance.  "Whatever," he muttered, "you're crazy."

Octavia shrugged.  “Suit yourself.  I’m just saying, I know these people.  You don’t.”

“Do you trust them?” he asked suddenly.  She turned to him, brow furrowed.  He asked her sincere opinion so rarely that it was always noteworthy when he did.

“Yeah,” she said sincerely.  “With my life.  Quite literally, on more than one occasion.”

He nodded.  “Okay then,” he said.  “If you say they’re legit, they’re legit.”

“They’re legit.”

“Then I’m in.”  He reached out and took her hand as she scooted her chair closer to lean on his shoulder.  “I’m sorry I was a dick who made you think I didn’t believe in you,” he told her, kissing her hair.  “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me.”

“I’m sorry I lied to you.  Monty was right, I should have just come clean to begin with.”

“I mean, I’d _definitely_ rather have you working behind the desk in some boring office job where no one ever swings a sword at your head,” he said wryly, “but at least an 18 th-century British country house doesn’t sound too lethal.”

“Unless the painting is real,” she corrected him, “in which case Kane gets the fulfillment of his lifelong dream, to meet Niccolo Machiavelli.  And I get to tag along for sword practice.”

“Then let's pray it's a forgery.”

Raven swept back in just then with a handheld data pad and tossed it unceremoniously at him.  His eyes widened as he scrolled through the index – hundreds upon hundreds of data files had been loaded onto it, more than he could get through in a month.

“What the hell is all this?”

“Your briefing,” she said shortly.  “You have thirty-six hours to become fluent in all Bureau protocols for active field agents so I can train you on the use of the Holistic Interference Output meter and take you to the transport lab for orientation.  Also the whole team has wardrobe fittings at 9 a.m. tomorrow, which includes you, so wear underwear you don’t mind half a dozen people seeing while they take your measurements.  And someone from Customs & Etiquette will be down to brief you around four today while I.T. is setting up your computer, so be ready for Clarke and Abby to cover that in your field drills tomorrow."

Bellamy stared from Raven to the handheld and back again, eyes wide, mouth agape.

“Time to go back to school, Professor,” said his sister dryly.  “Welcome to the Time Travel Bureau.”


	4. Chapter 4

****

 The “on/off thing” between Clarke and Raven which Octavia had mentioned in passing was, at the moment, on again (though Octavia didn’t yet know that).  So “on” in fact, that, as Bellamy sprawled on his sister’s couch, data pad in hand, frantically cramming for the next day’s protocol briefing, Clarke was across town in Raven’s bed, very much not thinking about work at all.

“Right there,” she gasped, back arching as Raven grinned mischievously down at her, twisting her wrist with impeccable precision and nudging the tip of the silicon vibrator right against Clarke’s G-spot, causing a breathy little exclamation of pleasure.  “Right there, babe, don’t stop.”

“Bossy,” chided Raven, leaning down to kiss the girl’s mouth, dark tangled hair tumbling loose over her shoulder, brushing Clarke’s pale peaches-and-cream skin.  “And not even a ‘please.’”  She retracted her hand a little, pulling the vibrator away, causing Clarke to bite her lip and utter a soft whimpering sound.

“Please,” she panted, lifting her hips, writhing, trying fruitlessly to capture the sensation again.  “Please, please.”

“That’s better,” said Raven lightly, plunging the vibrator back in place, hard and fast and deep, making Clarke cry out in startled pleasure.  “I worked fifteen hours today trying to get your partner up to speed, you better be nice to me.”

“Can we please . . . oh, God . . . yes, babe, yes, right there . . . can we please not talk about him right now?  You're killing the mood.”

“You're so full of shit,” laughed Raven, kissing her way down Clarke’s neck.  “You can’t tell me you don’t want to hit that.”

“I really, really don’t.”

"Uh-huh."

"I _don't_."

“Then you're crazy.  'Cause I sure do."

“Good for you,” said Clarke, then gasped sharply as the vibrator pressed against her G-spot again.  “He’s all yours.  You can have him.”

“He could be all _ours_ , is what I’m saying,” Raven suggested teasingly, pumping the vibrator in and out more rapidly as she felt Clarke approach the brink.  “Wouldn’t you rather have that than this old thing?”

“Raven . . .”

“I bet he’s good.  Cocky, but probably has decent moves.”

“Raven, _please,_ babe, I'm almost, I'm so . . .”

“I’m just saying,” Raven murmured lightly, brushing Clarke’s tangled golden curls out of her face as she began to fuck her in earnest, shifting her weight to take the girl’s slim pale thigh between her own and grind her cunt against it.  “We haven’t a real one of these in awhile.  You can’t tell me you don’t sometimes miss it.”

“Oh God, Raven,” Clarke panted, hips lifting and lifting, and as the orgasm inside her began to bubble over, there it was, just for a moment, a flash, then gone.

Raven’s slim strong arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her close as he sank down on top of her.  His strong, powerful back rising and falling as her fingers dug into his flesh.  Raven kissing her hair as pressure built and built, stretching her open.  This was the biggest of Raven’s four vibrators, but Bellamy was a tall guy, what if he was . . .

 _“Oh,”_ she gasped suddenly, hips convulsing as she came with a jolt, then clutching at Raven's face to kiss her mouth as the girl came hard against Clarke’s thigh.  With a heavy gasping sigh, Raven collapsed down on top of her, pinching Clarke’s ass to make her giggle as they settled in and caught their breath.

“Admit it,” said Raven, pushing the button on the metal bedside panel that dimmed all the lights, set the alarm clock and adjusted the temperature for sleep.  “You thought about it.  At least a _little_.”

“Raven, we’ve been over this,” Clarke sighed, closing her eyes and nestling into the girl’s shoulder.  “We discussed this at _length_ after Finn.  We decided, no more sharing dick.”

“Yeah, but this is different.”

“How?”

“Finn was a fuckboy.”

“Bellamy’s a fuckboy too.”

“No, he’s not.  He’s a nerd.  And the only reason you only don’t like him is because you're scared he might be smarter than you."  Clarke was silent.  "Admit it," Raven prodded her, "if he was here to be _Octavia's_ new partner, you’d have no problem.  The only reason you want to kill him instead of banging him is because he watched you work and wasn't impressed enough."

"That was below the belt," said Clarke, something a little wounded in her tone.  Raven raised her eyebrow with a teasing half-smile and let her fingers drift back down to Clarke’s soaked, still sensitive cunt, making Clarke shiver.

"Below the belt?" Raven repeated.  "Like, right around here?"

Clarke gasped as fingertips grazed her still-sensitive clit.  “I hate you.”

Raven laughed.  “No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” Clarke agreed, smiling despite herself, leaning over to kiss Raven’s shoulder as Raven rolled over to prop herself up on her elbow and regard her thoughtfully.

“Be honest,” she said.  “How much of it is that he was a showoff in the meeting, and how much of it is Jaha giving him your dad’s office?”

Clarke paused for a long moment, considering.  “I can’t tell,” she admitted finally.  “Maybe half and half?”

“You and Abby both knew he’d move someone else down here eventually,” Raven reminded her gently.  “He’s been telling you that for years.”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying that makes it less shitty.  I’m just saying, you understand that part isn’t Bellamy’s fault.”

“I know.”

“I mean, it's that or he just pulls up a chair to your desk and lurks creepily over your shoulder all day long.”

“I _know_ , Raven,” Clarke said, tone growing slightly defensive, and Raven obediently dropped it.

“How’s Abby?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke sighed.  “Quiet.  She didn’t say much at dinner.”

“Weird fuckin’ day for the Griffins.”

“You can say that again.”

“Weird fuckin’ day for –"

“Raven, I swear to God.”

“Just trying to lighten the mood.”  Clarke rolled her eyes.  “It’s gotta be weird for Kane, too,” Raven added thoughtfully.

“What is?”

“The whole Bellamy thing.”

“Why?" Clarke asked, brow furrowed in puzzlement.  "Because of Octavia?”

“No, dumbass, because of your mom.”

Clarke stared.  “What are you talking about?”

“Jake’s office,” Raven explained.  “Kane cares about her, and he wants her to be able to move on, but he was friends with Jake too, so it’s just as awkward for _him_ suddenly having to see the new kid sitting at that desk, even though he's happy for Octavia.  Plus then of course he can see that Abby’s upset, and anything that makes _her_ sad makes _him_ sad, but it’s all complicated by the fact that he likes her and he knows it’s beginning to show.  So he has no idea what to do, and of course he can’t talk to anyone about it, and the whole thing is just a mess.”  She sighed, flopping back over onto her back.  “I’m rooting for those two crazy kids,” she said, closing her eyes.  “They deserve to be happy.  If they hook up we could do that thing people used to do, remember at the Academy when I took 21st-Century Pop Culture as an elective, and there was that thing where when famous people dated their fans would like smoosh their names together into a couple name?  We could call them ‘Abacus.’  Get it?  Like Abby plus Marcus.  But then also, you know, like the math thing.  Because they’re nerds.”

“Raven,” said Clarke tightly, “what the actual fuck are you talking about?”

“Didn’t I tell you about that class?  I could have sworn I did.  Remember?  With all the singing competitions on television, and the wizard kid books, and –"

“Not the class, Raven.   _Kane_.”

“What about him?”

“What you just said.”

“What? That he likes your mom?”  Clarke was silent.  Raven opened her eyes and sat up to see an expression of complete bafflement on the girl’s face.  "Clarke, you're kidding, right?  You can't possibly never have noticed this."

"There's nothing to notice."

Raven laughed out loud.  “Oh, honey,” she said kindly, kissing Clarke and pulling her back down onto the pillows, wrapping her in her arms.  “It’s a good thing you’re pretty.”

“Shut up, Raven.”

"Goodnight to you too."

After a few moments, Clarke relented, relaxing into Raven's arms and closing her eyes, breathing slowing and deepening as she eased into sleep.  Raven watched her for a moment before she closed her own eyes too.  Underneath the joking, there'd been something real going on inside Clarke's worried blue eyes - something to do with that Jake Griffin-sized hole they never discussed which she was now suddenly being forced to acknowledge - that pinged a faint alarm in the back of Raven's mind. 

There were times when it was real fucking convenient not to have a family to deal with, she thought as she snuggled down into the pillows, chin resting on Clarke's shoulder, thinking about Jake Griffin's office, about Bellamy and Octavia, about Abby and Clarke and Kane, about all the things they weren't saying to each other and all the different ways that could blow up in their faces if things didn't get fixed.

Well.  Fortunately, there was no one on earth better at fixing shit than Raven Reyes.

 _Good thing you idiots have me,_ she thought to herself, as she finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

“All right, children, listen up,” Raven proclaimed as the team began to settle in around the conference table the next morning, coffee in hand.  (Director Jaha was not in attendance, so Monty had also brought donuts, improving morale considerably.)  “The fresco was reportedly on display for somewhere between ten and thirteen years in a private home in Derbyshire, England, which belonged to a Sir Charles and Lady Diana Sydney.  We have a bill of sale from an Italian antiquities dealer that places the purchase of the fresco somewhere in the 1790’s, but the date’s illegible.  The first concrete mention of it anywhere is from a letter sent in May 1796 from a houseguest of the Sydneys, who mentioned it in a letter to his father.  Apparently Lady S. hosted a ball that weekend for all the young people of the village, and everyone got a tour of the galleries and heard a whole long boring lecture on the fresco.  So it was definitely there by then, but it was gone when they sold it in 1803.  That's our window.”

“A ball?” Kane repeated, a pained expression on his face.  “Raven, _please_ tell me you’re not planning what I think you’re planning.  I am literally begging you.”

“I’m really, really sorry, Kane,” Raven told him, amused face clearly expressing that she was not sorry in the least.  “I promise it won’t be like last time.”

Bellamy looked around the table to find everyone on the verge of laughter and carefully avoiding each other’s glances. “Why?” he asked suspiciously.  “What happened last time?”

"Don't ask," Kane began at the same moment that Octavia interrupted him to tell her brother the story. 

“We were in 1920’s New York,” she explained.  “There was an art thief holed up in the Plaza Hotel who had stolen a counterfeit Fra Angelico from the Met.  Or, he was _supposed_ to have stolen a counterfeit, anyway.  It was on display as part of an exhibit, but it had taken a little water damage after a pipe burst in one of the storage rooms.  They didn’t want to break up the exhibit, so they hung a dummy up in its place while they sent the original off to be restored in time for the closing night gala.  So according to the General Timeline, the fake gets stolen, but the museum decides they’d rather quietly eat the loss of a decent reproduction than deal with the negative press of a break-in, so they hushed it up.  The wall stays blank for about four days until the restoration's finished, and that's the end of it.  No historical impact at all."

“Until about a year and a half ago,” Clarke continued, picking up the thread, “when suddenly a chronomaly appeared in the timeline; the guy who’s supposed to do the restoring suddenly decides to take his wife to Atlantic City for her birthday, so he pushes back the job from the Met until the following week."

"Fuck," said Bellamy, eyes widening.  "So the thief accidentally made off with the _real_ painting."

Clarke nodded.  "It threw a wrench in the whole timeline," she said.  "Red flags and alarms all over the place.  You wouldn't believe the number of different timeline errors that popped up all over the place.  For starters, the insurance company pays out a massive settlement they were never supposed to pay out, so the money’s not there two months later when a claim gets filed on a building in Queens that burns to the ground.  They decline the claim, so the businessman who owns the building goes broke, so the machinery company he was planning to open never gets opened, so hundreds of workers who were supposed to be employed there –"

“I get it,” interrupted Bellamy wearily, head beginning to spin. 

“And that was just one of the aftershocks.  There were dozens.  It was a mess.  Anyway, we tried a bunch of things that didn’t work.  We tried ruining the art restorer’s vacation plans so he’d stay in town by causing a rat infestation in the hotel in Atlantic City –"

“My idea,” said Monty proudly.

“But then they went to Boston to visit the wife's sister instead.  So we planted Mom as a telephone operator at the local FBI bureau who notified the Met she had received an anonymous tip about a planned burglary, to get them to beef up security on the Fran Angelico exhibit.”

“Which made everything worse,” Abby chimed in, “when he decided just to bypass that wing altogether, and ended up swiping a bust of Artemis that was about fifty times more valuable.  So then of course instead of being _our_ problem, it suddenly became _Pike's_ problem.  They had to wake him up at two in the morning to come in and take over as lead agent.  He was _. . ._ not happy.”

"It was rough," Clarke agreed.  "Mom and Kane had to let him win at poker a whole bunch of times to make him friends with them again."

“So finally we decided the only thing to do,” Octavia said, “was sneak into his hotel room to swap paintings during the two days he was hiding out there, before he got on a ship for London and sailed off into the Royal Ministry of Chronologist’s legal jurisdiction.  And . . . it was New Year’s Eve.”  She looked over at her boss, who was sitting there with his head in his hands. 

“Just tell him,” Kane grumbled, “get it over with.” 

A grinning Octavia turned back to her brother to go on with the story, clearly about to drop the punchline she'd been waiting to deliver.  "So, Clarke and I were on headset with Monty making the actual switch.  Raven had Kane and Abby, trying to make sure the thief didn’t make it back to his room before we were done.  They tracked him to the hotel ballroom, where there was a big New Year’s Eve party.  To keep him distracted, Raven suggested that Abby ask him to dance.”

“But, as it turned out,” Abby said, face composed but eyes twinkling with barely-suppressed laughter, “I was not his type.”

“But _Kane_ was,” Raven added gleefully.  “Which would have worked out perfectly, except that, as we learned –"

“Marcus Kane is the worst dancer in the history of time,” said Octavia.  “And we should know.  We’ve been everywhere.”

“Oh God,” Bellamy said, amusement mixed with sympathy in his voice as the picture beginning to formulate in his mind.  “What happened?”

“The complete eradication of all my personal dignity,” muttered Kane.

“I couldn’t watch,” Abby admitted frankly.  “I went to get a drink and told Raven just to tell me when it was over.”

“He stepped on the guy’s toes like a dozen times,” said Raven, “and then elbowed some millionaire’s wife in the face.  Not to mention the fact that he has no rhythm –"

“It was a _foxtrot_ , foxtrots are _hard_ -"

“Around about the time he bumped into a waiter and sent a tray of champagne glasses crashing to the floor,” Raven went on, ignoring him, “the art thief politely excused himself and fled the party.”

“Meaning Mom literally had to _pick his pocket_ ,” Clarke told Bellamy, amused, “and steal his hotel key before he got into the elevator, or he’d have walked right in on me and Octavia in the middle of slicing the painting out of the frame.  It was –"

“A clusterfuck,” Octavia pronounced.

“I was going to say, maybe not Kane's finest moment,” Clarke corrected her.

“And Raven _promised_ me,” said Kane bitterly, “she promised me on her _life_ that I would never have to go dancing on a field mission ever again.”

“I made you a retired military officer, so I can probably toss in an old leg injury,” Raven offered.  “That’s the best I can do.  But apparently there was a newsworthy shortage of eligible men at this ball, so either you dance, or the whole neighborhood thinks you’re an asshole.  Up to you which option you think is better for maintaining cover.  But I did schedule lessons for all of you Thursday morning at 10 a.m. in the staff gymnasium.  Wardrobe will have shoes for you to practice in.  Kane, I suggest you get an early start.”

“Don’t worry,” said Abby kindly, patting his hand.  “I’ll still dance with you, no matter how much you embarrass me.”

The others laughed.  But Kane didn’t.  He smiled, gamely, playing along, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Only Raven saw, anxiety bubbling up inside her chest.  She'd been joking last night, or mostly joking anyway, but she suddenly wondered if maybe she'd been more accurate than she knew.  Kane's eyes shifted downward to where Abby’s hand still rested lightly on his own and he swallowed hard, his fingers twitching for a moment as though considering pulling away, but stuck, unsure what to do. Everything suddenly felt like it was happening in slow-motion as Clarke, who'd been looking across the table at Octavia, shifted to turn back in her seat towards her mother, and Raven knew those sharp blue eyes that missed nothing would spot the thing which so far Abby had not. 

Raven thought about the look on Clarke's face in bed last night when she'd insisted that there was nothing going on between Kane and her mother, and what would happen if right now, right here, in the middle of a briefing, was the moment she realized Raven had been right, and what a disaster it would be for everyone if Clarke figured it out before Abby did, and how Kane's warm brown eyes were more miserable than she had ever seen them before, and how the train was about to run off the rails and she was completely powerless to stop it.

“Can we take a quick break?” said Bellamy suddenly.  “I’d love to refill my coffee before we get back to the briefing.”

There was nothing rude or even unfriendly in his tone, but it was surprising, and it cut through the casual merriment like a knife and brought the moment to a halt.  Raven looked up at him, ready to be irritated, until she watched his eyes flick swiftly from her to Clarke to Kane (who used the excuse of the interruption to politely withdraw his hand and reach for his coffee cup), and instantly she understood.

He'd seen it too.  He'd read everyone in the room, he'd seen the crash coming, and some instinct had triggered him to leap in front of the train and stop it.  Even though it had taken half an hour this morning to keep him and Clarke from ripping each other’s throats out over her demanding access to his confidential files from the Royal Library, some instinct in Bellamy he didn’t seem quite able to understand himself had led him to jump in to protect her.

She’d given more than a little idle thought to the prospect of tearing all his clothes off, Raven thought to herself, but goddammit, if he was going to be like this, she might actually have to _like_ him, too.

“Sure.  Everybody, take ten,” she finally said.  “When we come back, I’ll walk you through your dossiers and give you your assignments.  We’ve got Wardrobe this afternoon and you all need to be up to speed.  Go reload your coffees and meet back here at nine forty-five.”  

The group began to filter out into the hallway, making their way back towards the mess.  Abby was last, hand resting lightly on Kane’s back for just a moment as she squeezed past him around the conference table to get back to her office, causing him to freeze in place for just a moment before recovering himself and resume his conversation with Monty, who hadn’t noticed. 

Through the glass wall, Raven watched Bellamy, talking with his sister at her desk while his eyes still managed to take in everything happening in the office.  He’d seen Kane flinch at Abby’s touch, and he’d seen Abby continue on her way completely unaware of it, and he’d seen Clarke zoom right past it without noticing.  Then his head lifted briefly away from Octavia to see Raven watching him.

She raised her eyebrow, communicating a silent _I’m keeping an eye on your sneaky ass,_ which he received with a fraction of a grin, before responding with a faint, almost imperceptible gesture (which Octavia didn’t even notice) that was somehow simultaneously a nod towards the hallway where Clarke had disappeared and a sad, resigned shrug at the middle of the three offices.

Then the penny dropped, and suddenly Raven wanted to cry.

That was it.  That was the reason he’d stepped in so bluntly to distract Clarke from seeing the look on Kane's face.

He didn't know anything about these people and their relationships, except what his sister might have told him.  He hadn't seen the way she'd looked at Raven in bed last night when she'd said the thing she said.  He only knew he was the man sitting in her dead father’s office, at her dead father’s desk, and she’d only had twenty-four hours to adjust her new reality around that, and anything else on top of that was too damn much change for one person right now.  He had read everyone in the room with unfailing accuracy, deduced that whatever might have been happening was being rigidly suppressed out of the desire to protect Clarke, and he had instinctively moved into position to protect her too.  Bellamy had gotten Kane immediately, and he’d gotten Clarke immediately, and he’d seen Raven watch the moment unfold with no idea how to stop it, and he’d gambled on no one noticing he still had over half a cup of coffee still left in his mug. 

Raven wondered if there was a non-shitty and patriarchal term for “chivalrous” and made a mental note to ask Octavia, who would probably know.  Because he’d slipped into their effortless family dynamic like he’d been born here, like he innately understood without having to be told the way Clarke sometimes had to be protected from things, the way the empty office he was now filling cost her something painful and real every single time her eyes landed on it, and that as plainly fond as she was of Marcus Kane, today wasn’t the day for her to reckon with the fact that he was falling in love with her mother.

She'd have to deal with it soon.  They all would.  The way his smile had faded into sadness at her touch told Raven this wasn't a secret that could be kept for much longer.

But it didn't need to happen today.

She'd expected to find Bellamy Blake a lot of things - hot, cocky, difficult, stubborn, clever, a pain in the ass - but "unexpectedly kind at the exact right moment" had never appeared on that list.

She arched an eyebrow back at him, with a crooked, mischievous half-smile that was half amused and half inviting.  _All right,_ the look said.  _You can stay._

Bellamy smiled back.

* * *

 “Take two,” Raven announced as they all re-entered, freshly refilled coffees in hand.  “Back to 1796.”  She tapped a few times on her pad and pulled up a series of images on the airscreen projector in the center of the conference table: a painting of a grand manor house surrounded by sloping emerald lawns, some 20th or 21st-century photographs of what were probably its interior, and a portrait of an attractive but somewhat bitchy-looking blonde woman in her forties in Regency dress.  “Okay, this is Diana Sydney,” she told them.  “Her husband, Sir Charles, is apparently an elderly invalid who barely leaves his chambers, so you won’t have to worry about him.  This chick's the one you’re going to have to get past.  She’s American and married into her title, in exchange for shitloads of money which the Sydneys needed to maintain their estate.  Scroll down to files 25 through 50,” she said, gesturing to their handhelds, “and I’ll take you on a tour of the building.”

With Jaha gone, and with the easy camaraderie of the morning now dissipated, the group was amiable but focused, and Bellamy was about to get the chance to see Raven truly in her element.  The bulk of her and Monty’s jobs, leading up to a mission, consisted of detailed prep around every single aspect of the world their undercover identities would inhabit, from training them on period-accurate technology to obtaining valid currency to crafting a bulletproof false identity and drilling them on every detail until they were note-perfect.  Once the whole team was in the field, the two of them operated as a unit, sometimes in tandem (when the group was split up on separate missions, like they’d been in the Plaza Hotel), and sometimes spelling each other off at the monitor so they could take turns grabbing a few hours’ sleep on the sofa in Abby’s office.  The Renaissance History Department had earned the right to be, as they’d demonstrated themselves yesterday morning, moderate pains in Director Jaha’s ass, because the peculiar system they’d developed over the past years to make the best use of everyone’s skills resulted in a nearly 100% success rate in shutting down chronomalies before they spread.  They might have a tendency towards knocking off early on Friday afternoons, and there might occasionally be whiskey in their morning coffee on slow days, but they made up for it when there was actual work to do.

Raven’s briefings were a thing of beauty, colorful but efficient, and she took a rather diabolical pride in the crafting of undercover identities for the agents.  Today, apparently, she had decided to make some mischief.

The HIO (Holistic Interference Output) meter calculated the impact of agents’ actions in the field in terms of their effect on the General Timeline.  Purchasing or leasing property tended to ping alarms, as it left traces of their presence in the permanent historical record.  So Raven couldn’t just rent them a house in the neighborhood to shove them into Lady Diana Sydney’s social orbit and hope it resulted in an invitation to the ball Kane so badly didn’t want to go to.  But a letter of introduction from a distant friend of a friend announcing them as wealthy fellow Americans looking to purchase a house in the neighborhood, wishing to make the acquaintance of their fellow countrywoman, and paying all due deference to her status as the premiere hostess of the village, had done the trick and procured invitations to them all to stay at the manor as her guests.

Which meant, to ensure that all of them had access to the house (and, thus, to the fresco), as well as to simplify their cover stories as much as humanly possible, Raven informed them that all five of them were now related.

 _“What?”_ said Clarke incredulously, unable to keep her eyes from flickering over to Bellamy.

“What?” Bellamy exclaimed at the same time, very carefully not looking at Clarke.

 “It’s 1796,” she explained.  “I have to get both of you alone together in the gallery where Lady Sydney keeps the fresco.  If you’re not brother and sister, Clarke will raise too many red flags wandering alone through the house with you unchaperoned.”  She tapped at her pad a few times as Kane and Abby’s new dossiers appeared side by side on the projected screen.  “The good news for everyone but Clarke,” she said, “is that the rest of you can all keep your real first names.  Major Marcus Kane, you are a retired military officer who fought for the British against those rascally American upstarts in the colonies.  You married Mrs. Abigail Kane –“  (She couldn’t help but notice that Abby, Monty and Octavia found this amusing while Kane and Clarke did not, nor could she help but notice that once again, Bellamy’s eyes were tracking everything just as keenly as hers were).  “You married Mrs. Abigail Kane in Boston, where you had three children, and if anyone asks both your mothers were blonde, to explain why Clarke and Kane look nothing alike.  Fortunately the Blakes can pass as his kids if you squint.”

“That’s . . . kind of racist,” Bellamy pointed out.

“You’re going to the 18th century,” Raven retorted.  “Brace yourself, dude.”

“Ethnic ambiguity is sometimes a bonus in this job, unfortunately,” Kane explained to him.  “The Bureau classifies you based on how many different time periods you could accurately assimilate into without danger to yourself or sending your HIO meter off the charts.  Clarke is a Level 3 because she’s white and blonde, but if she was a man she’d be a Level 1.  That’s universal access.  You can go anywhere.  Abby and Octavia are 4’s.  Jaha was a 7 when he was a field agent; since, obviously, the range of time periods in America where a black man can walk around safely are . . . let’s just say, more limited.”

“What are you?”

“I’m a 5.  Half Latino, but strangers don’t always realize that.  I blend in easier than Jaha, but not as easily as Clarke.”

“Jesus, this is a fucked-up system.”

“Bureaucracy,” said Monty.  “Why do you think Raven and I have desk jobs?”

“Raven likes her desk job, thank you very much,” said Raven, shuddering.  “Field work involves talking to people.  _Hard_ pass.  But it sucks for Monty.  Renaissance was his third choice, he’d initially declared for Early 20 th Century, but they won’t send Asian-American agents anywhere near World War II.  So he switched from field agent to tech, and got stuck with us.”

“Anyway, back to the topic at hand,” said Clarke, redirecting the conversation away from something that had never ceased to be a sore spot with Monty.  “Tell us about our cover identities.”

“Ah, yes,” said Raven, “the three Kane children.  Bellamy is the oldest, obviously, and then O, and then you.  Congratulations, you have a big brother now.”

“Welcome to my world,” Octavia said to Clarke.  “If you want to keep him after this, you can have him.”

“One sister’s plenty,” said Bellamy, a flush sweeping over his cheeks that amused Raven greatly.

“Hold on,” said Clarke as Raven tapped on her handheld to pull up her dossier, along with the Blakes.  “ _That’s_ my new name?  You named me _Eliza_?”

Her mother looked her up and down critically.  “I can see it,” she finally pronounced.  “You could look like an Eliza.”

“I look _nothing_ like an Eliza.”

“Well, it’s too late now, I did all the paperwork,” said Raven, “so get used to it.  Blame your mother for naming you Clarke.”

“It drives me crazy every time,” Clarke sighed.  “Marcus gets to keep _both_ his names –"

“I’ll trade you for having to waltz with a fake leg injury,” he offered.

“But all of us have to change ours.”

“Fuck the patriarchy,” said Octavia agreeably.  “Think you can turn yourself into a Miss Eliza Kane in the next seventy-two hours?”

“Technically, _you’re_ Miss Kane,” Monty pointed out to her.  “As the oldest girl.  And she’s Miss Eliza.  Don’t screw that up, everyone will expect you to know that.”

“Are we both Mr. Kane?” Bellamy asked.

“He’s Mister, you’re Master,” said Monty.  “This was all covered in your handbook.”

“I was up until 5 am reading and I’m still only halfway through it,” he said a little defensively.  “There’s a lot to cover.”

“You’ll have either me or Raven in your earpiece the whole time,” said Monty.  “In case you fuck up.”

“Thanks,” said Bellamy grimly, “that’s very reassuring.”

“Cheer up, son,” said Kane, “we have it easy.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

“Because we aren’t the ones that have to wear corsets.”

Bellamy couldn't help himself.  His eyes flicked downwards, to the demure gray V of Clarke's neckline, and swallowed hard, then looked up to flush awkwardly under Raven's amused, perceptive stare.

This was going to be fun.


End file.
